2662: Ten Reasons Why Your Butt is Flat (& What to do About It)

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1:10Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Wayfair, every style, every home. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

1:37Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in the world. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is all about building your butt, the 10 reasons why people struggle. These are the real reasons. If you fix these, your butt will grow. By the way, because of this episode, we made our butt mod. This is a modification that teaches you how to turn your workouts into butt building workouts. It's very inexpensive because it's 50 % off right now. That makes it$23.50. Go to mapsmods, M-A-P-S-M-O-D-S.com. Go butt mod, click on that. Use the code butt50 to get the 50 % off. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Seed.

2:16Adam Schafer:This is the world's best probiotic. probiotics have been shown to help with skin digestion with mental clarity it also seems to have some athletic performance benefits go to seed.com forward slash mind pump use the code 25 mind pump get 25 off your first month's order of seeds daily symbiotic all right here comes the show you got pancake butt you look back and there's nothing there some people call you long back your glutes won't grow what is going on look we know why there's 10 reasons why your butt is flat and we're going to fix it for you we've seen this many many times we have the solution get ready i don't know if i've heard long back before that one got me dude

3:02Sal Di Stefano:i don't think i heard anyone say long back before pancake ass yeah i definitely heard pancake yeah

3:08Adam Schafer:no listen this is a this is all joking aside and obviously oh no this is i opened that to That is a serious topic, bro. This is, yeah, a pain point. It's a pain point. And women in particular are very focused on developing their glutes. By the way, I'm going to say this right now. This is a great muscle to develop. This is an athletic muscle. You get strong glutes. It serves you big time. You see an athlete. I'll ask Justin this. Justin, how can you tell when you're on the field, when you play football, if a dude is going to be able to run over people?

3:37Sal Di Stefano:It's something to do with powerful glutes.

3:38Adam Schafer:I'm scared. It is 100 % true. Glutes give you tremendous function. They're functional muscles. This is why they're attractive because it signals health and athleticism and function. So it's a great muscle development. Of course, women want to develop it because people are attracted to it. It looks good. The problem is a lot of people struggle with this. They try to build their butt, and it's not responding, and they can't figure out what the heck is going on here.

4:05Sal Di Stefano:Even though this is a challenging muscle for a lot of people to grow, it actually is one of those muscles that you can significantly grow. That's right. It's a big muscle. And so once you solve these things that we're going to talk about, I have seen some amazing before and afters where somebody is like, I could never, ever, and then all of a sudden, huge difference.

4:30Adam Schafer:Yes, listen, 99 % of the people watching this - It's a big muscle. There's no need for implants. Listen, 99 % of the people watching this right now, one or more of the reasons why your butt isn't growing is because of what we're going to talk about. Most likely multiple. If you fix it, you'll see it grow. So I'll start with the first one. This is probably the most common reason why a lot of women can't get their butt to grow. It's because they're also trying to get abs. You're trying to get abs at the same time. Now, there's nothing wrong with trying to get abs, but when you're trying to see your abs and get leaner, you're not going to build.

5:01Adam Schafer:You don't build in a calorie deficit. it. You have to eat more food to build anything. So a lot of women, they want, this is what they want. This is what they'll say. I want the snatched waist and the basketball, but great pick one. Cause that's the one we're going to focus on. You can't do both at the same time. And if you're not eating enough, it's not going to grow. And I can't tell you how many times I had a female client who wanted to build her butt. And all we had to do, all we had to do surplus is bump their calories. Suddenly the glutes showed up. Suddenly this was not a problem.

5:32Sal Di Stefano:This is no different than some guy coming to me and saying, I want to get giant arms or build my biceps. And he's eating three salads a day. Just not going to happen. It's impossible. I don't care how good the exercise is, how great your training is. It doesn't matter. You are not giving the body the caloric surplus it needs in order to go build more tissue.

5:51Adam Schafer:By the way, this has to be consistent. So here's another mistake. I understand this, by the way. This is more common for women than it is for men. they're afraid to go in the calorie surplus because they don't want to gain lots of body fat, right? So what they'll typically do is they'll hear this. Okay, good. I'm going to, I'm going to try and go into calorie surplus. And one of two things either happens. One, their surplus isn't really a surplus. They eat a little more, but then they self-correct when they see the scale go up a pound or two, or they feel a little fluffy or they feel a little bloated or they feel a little bigger and they drop the calories back down.

6:21Adam Schafer:The other option is they'll, they'll do a calorie surplus for a day or two, and then there'll be in a calorie deficit for three or four days. This has to be a consistent surplus. Aim for a good 500 calories above what it takes to maintain your body weight. So if you're eating 2000 calories a day and your body weight is staying the same, go to 2500 calories. If you're eating 1500 calories and your body weight staying the same, go up to 2000 calories. 500 calories above your maintenance is what you're going to need to give your body the building blocks it needs to build your butt. If you don't do this, you can have everything perfect.

6:58Adam Schafer:You can be on anabolic steroids. You can do everything you want. Your butt's not going to grow because there's nothing to grow it with. There are no building blocks. The next one is you're not trying to get strong. The tightest correlate to muscle growth is strength. Nothing correlates as closely to building muscle as strength does. If you're in the gym and you're not getting stronger and you think you're going to build anything, it's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. If you're in the gym and you're consistently getting stronger, congratulations, you're going to start building some muscle.

7:34Adam Schafer:Just stay on that path.

7:35Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. When that's top of mind, you pick, which is going into kind of your next point, but you just pick a higher quality of an exercise, a higher quality and value of a workout. So your entire focus is on getting stronger. It just naturally produces more musculature as a result. Another way to say it would be quit chasing the burn and lift heavy ass weight. Yeah. I mean, that's typically what happens is there is this misconception that if I feel it in the muscle and I feel that burning, that it's growing and it doesn't necessarily work that way. Just because you can make a muscle group burn does not mean that you're building it.

8:15Adam Schafer:One of the most well-known butt building experts who also happens to be a great trainer uh brett contraris he's a great trainer he became famous uh for helping uh female competitors and women build their butts and he is an excellent trainer you can tell you he's trained lots of people sometimes you'll hear you know quote unquote experts communicate things and i'll heal right away i can tell you haven't trained in the clinical side of things he has trained lots and lots and lots of people lots and lots of women for years and years and years and you should see the weight that his clients are pushing yeah and he puts them through like he's like look look, we want to build a butt.

8:52Adam Schafer:We're going to get your squat up. We're going to get your deadlift. We're going to get you to lift heavy weight. It's not the burn. It's not the sweat that does it. It's not the how tired you are at the end of your workout. It's did you get stronger? I've never met a woman who didn't add 50 pounds, who added 50 pounds with a squat, who didn't build the bigger butt. That's right. It happens every single time. So your number one goal in the gym that's going to produce the goal of a bigger butt is to get stronger. So this should be the key. And if you're not getting stronger,

9:20Sal Di Stefano:it's probably and by the way it goes hand in hand with your first tip getting stronger with the calorie surplus is what's going to do that oh yes you you skip out on one of these two things and you're going to miss you could maybe maybe you're trying to get strong but then you're not giving your body the calorie surplus it's not going to build or vice versa so they both are

9:38Adam Schafer:are very very important right uh next up you're just doing dumb exercises you're not doing exercises that really move the needle um this has gotten better this was in the in the uh

9:51Sal Di Stefano:90s in the 90s in the early 2000s it was uh crazy how how bad this was i mean this was but this is also back when you didn't see anybody squatting or deadlift in the gym this was like nobody was and then definitely girls that wanted to build butt were not doing that they were doing the thigh master you know those late 90s when thigh master came around like yeah that was the type of stuff that people were doing to build their butt which is just a terrible strategy or Or doing the cables. Step ups or the kickback. Yeah, cables around their ankle and kicking back or donkey kickbacks. These exercises, although they activate the glutes, and I'm not saying they can't play a role in supporting that, they should not be the core or the foundation of your program.

10:35Adam Schafer:No, the foundation of your routine where you're trying to get stronger. These are the exercises that matter for building a butt. You want to build a butt, you're in the calorie surplus, and you're like, okay, I need to get strong. Where should I try to get strong? What exercises? It's great to get strong in a lot of exercises, but you want to build your butt. Which ones? Squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts. Those three right there.

10:55Sal Di Stefano:You can literally only do those three forever and get strong at them and build a massive butt just from that. And never do another butt exercise.

11:04Adam Schafer:No, and you can get really strong at those exercises. You show me a girl that could squat 225 pounds or can hip thrust 400 pounds, and you probably will have a girl with a really round, well-developed butt. So get strong at those lifts and those lifts should be the foundation of your routine. In other words, if you're lifting weights three days a week, the first exercise each day should be either a squat or a squat variation, right? So like a split stance squat is fine, like some kind of squat variation, a deadlift or a deadlift variation and a hip thrust. Start your workouts with those and all your effort and intensity and focus is on those lifts.

11:41Adam Schafer:That's what you care about the most. That's where I want to get strong. And if you get stronger in those, you'll see your butt grow.

11:45Sal Di Stefano:It's so funny because it's almost like upside down what's being promoted and marketed because like a lot of those exercises have like booty band, for instance, that became a big thing. Right. Or like, you know, a lot of these like little techniques to try and activate the glute more when we're doing step ups or whatever it is, which would be great to either use as a primer going into the workout or like, you know, build up a little more volume on your days in between. mean, but like they're, they're missing the biggest moving things they can do.

12:15Adam Schafer:That's right. That's right. Which brings us, uh, and here's where the value is with those, right? You might just have poor technique and connection. Now it is, it is the case sometimes, not often, but sometimes you are squatting and you're squatting a lot and your strength is going up in your squat. But what you notice is your quads are really getting well-developed and your butt doesn't seem to be getting a lot of the gains. Your technique may be favoring your quads. Now, squats, the glutes play a major role, but can you do a squat in a way that gets the glutes to do less of a role and the quads to do more of a role?

12:47Adam Schafer:Yes. And sometimes this happens naturally. And so what you want to do is you want to change your technique and your connection. Here is where a lot of those exercises that Adam and Justin mentioned, like the dog pees and the kickbacks and the cable movements can play a role. And what you would do, let's say this is you and you've been squatting for a little while. What you would do is you'd start your workout out with some of those isolation exercises so you could feel the glutes and get a little bit of a pump. Then go to your squat, change your technique so that you could feel what you felt with those exercises.

13:17Adam Schafer:Now you're focusing on the glutes and suddenly the squats become a butt exercise.

13:22Sal Di Stefano:And a lot of times we'll notice too with clients, it's a depth issue. So we're not getting enough depth in that squat, which really gets full range of motion and allows the glutes to really kind of kick into the exercise and contribute. So to that point, I was actually going to comment on what Sal's saying. I think you said it wasn't that common. I find this really common. In fact, I think today, most women know that squatting and deadlifting are the movements that they do, but a lot of them don't have the range of motion or they're so quad dominant that when they do the squats, they just get a pump on their quads and they're not feeling a lot in their butt.

13:57Sal Di Stefano:And a lot of that is due to what Justin's saying is like form and technique, not enough depth or their hip flexors are so short and tight that when they go to squat, they hinge over. They put all the weight on the front of their quads. Not a lot of it's shifted in the posterior chain. And so I think a lot of this sometimes is a technique because there's many people that I know that I, that's the first thing I always ask is like, what exercises are you doing? And most of them got to the point now where they know that they need a deadlift and squat. But then when you look at the technique, you realize that, oh, they're so quad dominant.

14:27Sal Di Stefano:That's why they're not feeling it.

14:28Adam Schafer:By the way, this is why the hip thrust got so popular. That's right. The hip thrust is not a better butt building exercise than the squat. There's studies on this. It's proven. And they're both great. It overcomes bad technique. Yes. That's right. They're both great butt building exercises. Squats and hip thrusts, great butt building exercises.

14:44Sal Di Stefano:It's almost impossible to do hip thrusts and not fill your butt. That's right. Where in a squat, it takes technique. That's right.

14:49Adam Schafer:So with the hip thrust, if you're one of those people where you challenge to see your glutes really respond to squats, then the hip thrust should be the focus of your routine. So it might look something like this. Instead of starting your week off with squats, maybe you start them with your hip thrust. That's your first exercise of the week. after the weekend when you're fed and rested and that becomes the the focus but but it is not necessarily a better glute exercise but it is for people who have trouble connecting the glutes and i think you know just to back you up adam when people come to you who have been training who say they struggle building their glutes you're right oftentimes it is connection because now the selection bias goes down to like i am doing this i mean that's a good point i'm i that's what

15:31Sal Di Stefano:i'm thinking of is people that come to hire me not just random clients that i just got that would have never done that. Because if you haven't done any, a lot of times, a person who's never trained is not going to have done the best movements, right? But normally when someone comes to me and says, hey, I'm struggling with building my butt, they've already researched enough to have been trying the right movements, but they tend to be very quad dominant.

15:49Adam Schafer:Right. Next up, your reps are too high. I still see this sometimes. When we first created MAPS Anabolic, phase one is this low rep. You're into like three, four, five reps. and so many women still write in and say, I can't believe the gains. Now, there's nothing necessarily magical about low reps. Low reps are valuable. So are higher reps. I mean, you go into the 15-rep range, the 12-rep range, 10-rep range. They're all valuable. They're all built muscle. But if you've never spent five or six weeks in just four reps or five reps, you have no idea what you're missing out. You jump into a long phase, like even four weeks, Just a four-week phase of I'm going to the gym and all of my sets, I'm going to keep them five reps or lower for my butt.

16:38Adam Schafer:And I'm just going to get strong. I want to see if I can hip thrust 400 pounds for three reps. I want to see if I can squat 250 pounds or 220 pounds. I want to see if I can deadlift 200 pounds or 220 pounds off the ground for one or two reps. Watch out. Especially if you feed yourself, you're going to see some incredible things.